Hugo-Lj.-Odhner-SPIRITS-AND-MEN-Bryn-Athyn-Pennsylvania-ANC-1958-1960

Spirits and Men
Some Essays on the
Influence of Spirits upon Men,
as Described in the
Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg
By
Hugo Lj. Odhner
THE ACADEMY BOOK ROOM·
Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania
1960

COPYRIGHT 1958 AND 1960 BY
THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH
First printing 1958, 500 copies
Second printing 1960, 500 copies
PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY
LANCASTER PRESS, INC., LANCASTER, PENNA.

CONTENTS
PAGE
Acknowledgments
I The Knowledge of the Afterlife 1
II Spirits and Men 7
III The Danger of Open Communication with Spirits 20
IV Our Spiritual Guardians 42
v Spirits and Human States 63
VI Spiritual Associations 75
VII Influx and Persuasion 87
VIII Influx and Cupidity 101
IX Enthusiastic Spirits 112
x Spiritual Causes of Fortune 124
XI "Cuticular Spirits" and "Sirens" 131
XII Dreams 138
XIII General Influx 152
XIV Influx and Disease 171
xv Mental Causes of Illness 185
XVI Spiritual Sources of Health 205
XVII Angelic Intermediacy in Divine Revelation 211
Subject Index

AC
AE
AR
Can.
Char.
CL
CLJ
Coro.
DLW
Dom.
DP
DV
EU
SMem.
HD
HH
Infl.
Inv.
LJ
LJ post.
Lord
Love
9Q
SD
SDmin.
TCR
WE
W is.
1Econ.
2Econ.
Fibre
R. Psych.
Docu.
KEY TO REFERENCES
Cited Works by Emanuel Swedenborg
Arcana Coelestia
Apocalypse Explained
Apocalypse Revealed
Canons of the New Church
Doctrine of Charity
Conjugial Love
Continuation of the Last Judgment
Coronis
·Divine Love and Wisdom
De Domino
Divine Providence
De Verbo
Earths in the Universe
Five Memorable Relations
New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine
Heaven and Hell
Influx, or Intercourse of Soul and Body
Invitation to the New Church
The Last Judgment
The Last Judgment (posthumous)
The Doctrine concerning the Lord
On the Divine Love
Nine Questions concerning the Trinity
The Spiritual Diary
The Spiritual Diary Minor
The True Christian Religion
The Word Explained (Adversaria)
On the Divine Wisdom
Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Part I
Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Part II
Economy of the A1Jimal Kingdom, Part III
The Rational Psychology
Documents concerning Swedenborg (R. L. Tafel)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A large part of the material used in the following essays
was originally collected for some doctrinal addresses given
before audiences in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, some twenty
years ago. Chapter IV is based on an article published in
New Church Life in May 1932. With reference to the chap-
ters on Disease, Doctor Marlin W . Heilman and Doctor
Robert Alden made several kind suggestions. And the Rev-
erend W . Cairns Henderson has acted as my valued con-
sultant in the preparation of the manuscript for the press.
Selected references to the Writings of Emanuel Sweden-
borg have been inserted as footnotes for the convenience of
those who might wish to consult our sources on specific
points ; and a list of abbreviations used to designate various
cited works of Swedenborg is given at the beginning of the
volume.
Since the subjects of the chapters intertwine, a certain
amount of reiteration could not be avoided except at the sacri-
fice of clarity. The book is submitted in its present form-
with many references--in the hope that it may encourage its
readers to further studies of the unique testimony of Sweden-
borg about the relationship of the two worlds and the connec-
tion of the spirit with the body. Its publication by the Book
Room of the Academy of the New Church adds to the many
debts which the author owes to his Alma Mater.
HUGO LJ. ODHNER
May 1958

I "In My Father's house
are many tnatisiotis. If it
were tiot so I would have
told you. I go to prepare
a place for you.''
John 14: 2
The Knowledge of the Afrerlife
Few deny that man has a mind as well as a body. And
since time immemorial it has been felt-in a parallel fashion-
that there is an unseen realm of spiritual life, the abode of
souls, the real home of the human mind, beyond or within
the material world.
But in this pragmatic century any mention of a "spiritual
world" will likely cause embarrassment or misgivings unless
t_he reference is simply to the familiar haunts of our own
mind. Even from Christian pulpits the doctrine of man's
immortality is often spoken of only in apologetic whispers.
And when the more conservative among the clergy speak at
a funeral, it is only to announce in dolorous tones that the
departed will sleep in the grave until a mythical day of gen-
eral resurrection. Nothing is said of the bourne to which
the deceased has departed, nor of the life-functions which
might now become his, or the spiritual treasures which he
takes with him. Since the churches are silent, it is not sur-
prising to find a credulous multitude who draw a confused
comfort from the report of mysterious and unusual happen-
ings which they interpret as interventions by the spirits of
the dead in our human affairs.
Nor is it any wonder that the respectable scientist shies
off from the study of such a field-wherein fact and fancy
seem to intertwine. When the imagination has once bee~
aroused, a less cautious mind may easily overstep the evi-
1

2 SPIRITS AND MEN
dence. Even science has bred a fiction of its own, and there
has been a recrudescence of a specific brand of popular lit-
erature which solemnly gathers hearsay evidence not only
about apparitions and "poltergeists" who play noisy havoc
in haunted houses and spirits who at will assume "ecto-
plastic" bodies, but about space-wanderers in "flying saucers"
which defy gravity and dematerialize in a moment!
Such fantasies are enough to discourage sober minds from
an acceptance of inconclusive claims. Yet the failure to
prove the presence of spirits by' sensual demonstrations does
in no wise disprove the existence of a spiritual world which
influences our lives intimately and in orderly ways, but which
by its very nature eludes experimental approach. And al-
though there is much self-delusion, and much trickery and
deception among the so-called "mediums" who claim contact
with spirits, there is also evidence at hand to show that man~
kind is still confronted with unsolved problems and that there
are undiscovered depths within the human mind itself which
transcend our rational analysis. Empirical science has not
given any satisfying explanation even of the ordinary proc-
esses of our thought, memory, and emotion. Nor can it with
any surety deny the visionary experiences of many who assert
thaf they have "seen spirits."
Revelations about the Spiritual Wodd
Besides all this ; Can we ignore the testimony of all the
prophets, philosophers, saint$ and seers, many of whom we
still reckon among the most enlightened of men, and who not
only sincerely believed in guardian spirits but whose ·eyes
were at times open to glimpses o.f the world of the hereafter?
Did not our Lord Himself confirm the age-long c.onviction
~f mankind when He said, "In My Father's house are many
mansions. If not, I would have told you. I go to prepare a

THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE AFTERLIFE 3
place for you"? Yet He also intimated that the time was
not yet ripe to speak openly of the mysteries of the kingdom
of heaven. He could speak of them only in parables. "These
things have I spoken unto you in proverbs," He said, "but
the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in
proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father" (John
16: 25). "When the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide
you into all truth" (John 16: 13).
The promise of such an explicit revelation was fulfilled in
an unexpected way. It was granted to Emanuel Sweden-
borg, the Swedish savant and philosopher of the eighteenth
century, to become a citizen of two worlds for a period of
twenty-seven years. Inspired by the Spirit of Truth he was
given to write down his experiences gathered during his
intercourse with spirits and angels in the spiritual world,
and to publish the truth about the afterlife, lest the spirit
of denial which was already then beginning to rule the
worldy-wise should also corrupt the simple in heart and the
simple in faith.1
Only a Divine revelation could disclose to
our race the truth about heaven and hell. At the same time
Swedenborg, after diligent study of the Sacred Scriptures,
was inspired to find its internal or symbolic meaning which
accorded in every part with the doctrine known to the
angels ill heaven.
Doctrinal Preliminaries
Since the present little book may find its way into the
hands of readers who are not familiar with the doctrines of
the New Church, it seems well at the outset to review some
of the leading truths which New Church readers take for
granted. These teachings, which must be postulated if we
are to understand the Scriptures rationally and explain the
1HH 1

4 SPIRITS AND MEN
phenomena of the mind and of nature, may be summarized
as follows:
1. The Divine purpose in creation is to provide a heaven
from the human race.
2. Man is a spirit or mind clothed, while on earth, with
a material body.
3. There are two distinct worlds-a material world in
which men live as to their bodies, and a spiritual world
where angels and spirits dwell. The spiritual world is
substantial, yet independent of what we know as "space"
and "time"-which are properties of nature.
4. The spirit or mind of man is immortal. At death he
lays aside his material body, never again to assume it.
5. No angels were created directly into the spiritual
world, nor did any spiritual beings exist before the crea-
tion of mankind. The spiritual world contains a heaven
and a hell, both of which consist of the spirits of men who
have been born on some earth in the vast universe. There
are no angels, spirits, or devils who were not born as men.
6. Between heaven and hell there is a "world of spirits,"
which is the realm or state into which all spirits pass
immediately after death to prepare f?r their chosen heaven
or for their chosen hell. When evil becomes predominant
in this intermediate realm, it is ordered by a general "last
judgment." The final of these judgments- symbolically
predicted in the Book of Revelation-took place in the
year 1757.
7. The inhabitants of the spiritual world constantly ex-
ert an influence on the human race on earth analogous to
the influence which a man's own spirit exerts on his body.
8. Nonetheless the two worlds are utterly separate in
appearance and invisible to each other, lest the freedom
of man or the progress of spirits be disturbed.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE AFTERLIFE 5
9. It is therefore disorderly and injurious for men to
seek open intercourse with spirits, and it is also forbidden
for spirits to seek to obsess men.
10. The only legitimate way to learn about the afterlife
is through the teachings of Divinely appointed prophets
and seers : "If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the
dead" (Lu. 16 : 31). The doctrines given through Swe-
denborg constitute a final revelation granted for the sake
of the restoration of a true Christian religion or a New
Church.
The title of our book does not imply any claim that it
covers all the relations of spirits and men. Nor is it our
purpose here to describe the spiritual world or to define the
nature of the soul and its life. But in the voluminous Writ-
ings of Swedenborg we have an inexhaustible field of infor-
mation about the arcana of the spiritual world "from things
seen and heard" and about the laws which govern the impact
of that world upon our lives. . There, also, are shown the
different angelic influences which succeed each other as man
advances along the path of regeneration.
What we here wish to stress is that man's character is
finally formed by the spiritual influences which he invites
from the unseen world. It is often claimed that man is
merely a product of his heredity and his environment. But
while the parental strain determines the initial form of his
mind and the more active loves and abilities with which he
starts in life ; and while his surroundings are at first pre-
determined and certainly limit his opportunities for knowl-
edge and usefulness ; yet within the range of these two factors
of heredity and environment man exercises a choice which
gradually builds within him a character quite individual and
free. For as to his mind he moves in a spiritual environ-

6 SPIRITS AND MEN
ment which always corresponds to his own states of mind.
The ability of man to become responsible for his own inner
character and final destiny is due to the fact that he can-in
freedom and according to his reason---choose what kind of
spirits shall inspire his thoughts, purposes, and decisions.
Although he feels at all times as if he were moved by his
own affections, his spirit is actually held, unknowingly, in
an equilibrium between influences from heaven and from hell,
and is motivated either by the affections of angels or by the
lusts of evil spirits. He does not live from himself. He is
only a receptacle of a life which originates from God but
which is mediated by the souls, good and evil, who inhabit
the spiritual world.
And the purpose of the following essays is to examine
some of the manifold ways in which our lives are moulded
for good or ill by the influx of these invisible agencies.

II "What is man that Thou
art mindful of him?"
Psalm 8 : 4
Spirits and Men
Faith and Superstition
The ages preceding the dawn of the New Church were
steeped in superstition. Every graveyard was peopled wit.h
spectres. The Devil made his appointments with witches and
wizards, and ministers of the church solemnly cooperated with
panicky magistrates to prevent unlawful intercourse with
spirits. Diseases were often treated by exorcism-by driving
the obsessing demons away.
Today most of us sneer at superstitions. And when we
of the New Church nevertheless proclaim our faith in the
proximity and influence of the spirit-world, there are those
who sneer at us.
But true faith is a very different thing from superstition.
Superstition wishes to assign to tpe supernatural all unknown
causes of natural happenings and evades reasonable explana-
tions. It lacks authority. It creates fear rather than under-
standing. It advances elusive claims to special sanctity or
unusual enlightenment which some will capitalize for their
own gain or repute. It leads not towards freedom and charity
and social progress, but to a slavery to forms and castes, and
often ·engenders distrust and persecution.
Superstition does not draw its origin from Divine revela-
tion, but is conceived from human anxieties and undue ambi-
tions while it is mothered by ignorance. It is not satisfied
with the revealed knowledge ii.nd shows .a lack of faith in the
Lord's omnipotent laws.
But over against Superstition stands Skepticism, which
7

8 SPIRITS AND MEN
proudly spurns admitting the existence of any invisible factors
in life except the purely physical. Not unlike a company of
physicians of whom Swedenborg speaks in one of his memor-
able relations, and who claimed to have cured the pains of
conscience by mustard-plasters and cupping-glasses, many
skeptics now explain all unusual mental states as mere symp-
toms of digestive disorders, wrong diet, or glandular de-
ficiencies, and deny any other cause for crime than physical
appetites and social maladjustments.2
A rational faith in the interdependence of the inhabitants
of the spiritual world and those of the natural, and in the
normal but unconscious communion of spirits and men, stands
free from both superstition and skepticism. Such a rational
faith is derived solely from Divine revelation. Yet it is also
founded on the primary testimony of man's own consciousness
-that he is essentially a spiritual being, a free thinking mind,
although he is clothed by a body of carefully selected material
substances which in many ways limit the expression of his
mental powers. Nor can any authentic experience upset our
faith in the continual operation of the spiritual world-the
proper world of human minds and living forces-into the
world of nature. Without any hesitation we can postulate,
and challenge any one to disprove, that life does not inhere in
matter but inflows from an inner source. Indeed it is beyond
the scope of science ever to deny that-ultimately-matter is
derived from life.
The mode by which the Lord created the universe is a
subject far afield from our present discussion. Still it must
be premised that the spiritual can act upon the natural, that
the mind can be present in the body, and that there can be an
influx of !_he life ~f_s~s into men living on earth. And this
because the world of matter is created and sustained by the
Lord mediately through the spiritual world.3
The natural
2 TCR 665 s Can., God iv

SPIRITS AND MEN 9
originates from the spiritual, as an effect is produced from its
cause! The material world is therefore an "open world"
which constantly receives a formative influx from the~p~itual
world. It is the spiritual world which-as the soul of the
mechanical universe-imposes patterns and forms and at
length moulds material substances to its own purposes, imag-
ing its own forms in the forms of living organisms, whether
plants or men. Only when the necessity of this is seen and
acknowledged, can our faith in the existence of the spiritual
world become rational.
Faith, to be rational, must be calm. It must not ·be based
in hysteria or upon passing moods, or on the testimony of
purely exceptional and questionable phenomena ; nor on re-
search conducted in darkened chambers. Faith must see the
operation of the soul upon the body and of spiritual things
upon natural, not as a mechanical process or as a transfer of
energy from one physical realm to another, but as the be-
stowal of the qualities of life upon visible things of ~e,
which, -so far astheir o~substance and motions are con-
cerned, are dead. Such a bestowal of qualities takes place,
we conceive, by what the Writings call "infllix." The spir-
inml does not act upon matter as do physical forces; inste~,
it bestQ__v.,'.s_ qualities.
When the Writings expound the doctrine that the life of
God is mediated for human minds by the spiritual world, or by
the spirits and angels there, they are not discussing the cur-
rents of natural energy which fashion corpuscular matter and
course through the bodies of men, but the transmission of hu-
man qualities-of good and evil-qualities which make the
natural activities of one man vastly different from those of
another; different throughout, different in intention, different
in mode, different in effect. The things of dead, elemental
nature have attributes, dimensions, conditions, motions. But
•TCR 280: 8

10 SPIRITS AND MEN
in a strict sense, nature has no qualities, no "states" of life.
Its only state is one of death. Its only quality is its inertia,
its lack of any power to change its state. All appear~£
·life in nature is borrowed from the spiritual world. In plants
and ;;;animals we see s~mething added that is not of nature,
somethirig which gives an appearance not of blind motion but
of purposeful change--a conatus or endeavor, an. appearance
of aspiration, will, and freedom.
Human Freedom
In man, this freedom becomes self-conscious. He is sensi-
tive to the qualities of life. He is subject to various states
and attitudes, and feels that he can to an extent determine
them. He can choose between right and wrong. He cannot
change his natural environment of a sudden, although this
also will yield somewhat to his will. But in the inner realm
of his spirit he feels himself above the conditions of nature,
feels himself part of a free world in which he can will and
think as he pleases; and for what he does in that world he
feels responsibility.
But even in his mind man is not utterly free. His natural
mind is built up out of elements drawn from heredity and from
education, from early impressions and unconscious influences.
Is he solely accountable for all the changes within his mind-
all the suggestions and impulses of his inner world? If he
were, ~ould it not be a terrible responsibility-beyond his
power to bear? One moment of impulse could determine his
entire spiritual destiny-one decision might send him into
anguish forever- if that were so! And if thus determined,
he would no longer be free to change his general state.
Even spiritual freedom is therefore governed.most care-
fully by the Lord. The Lord leads man gently into his free-
dom. Even the spirit of man has to be surrounded by re-

SPIRITS AND MEN 11
straining conditions and circumstances. Its freedom has to
be limited to a few things, tested. Its bounds have to be let
out gradually, his states have to change by degrees.
Therefore it is provided, that man's spirit should be sur-
rounded with attendant spirits, good and evil, through whom
the influx of life may be accommodated so that his choice and
his responsibility can be particularized and limited to his
capacity at each moment. It is of Divine mercy that this is
so; otherwise man could never be saved, but he would plunge
himself into hell with the first evil choice. Instead of being
at once introduced into the responsibility for hi§ who~~~r
it~al destiny, he is therefore gradually introduced into a choice
between particular states, or between the delights offered by
particular spirits, good and evil. He is not made responsible
for the state of his whole mind at once.
This, then, is the explanation of the many shifting and
contradictory states of a man. He is held in an equilibrium
between go2<!_spirit~n~d evil ~~ts. He is given liis-chance
to change his general state, by countless particular oppor-
tunities of choice. His spiritual freedom is doled out to him
"piecemeal," and from his moments of choice, a series of free
decisions, his character is built up and gradually matures, and
becomes able to enter an ever wider choice, a more intelligent
freedom.
This is, of course, illustrated by the gradual way in which
one acquires freedom in natural affairs in youth and adult
age. Parents, teachers, masters or employers will give the
youth more freedom, more autonomy, so far as he can be
trusted to understand what he is actually committing himself
to. But when it is seen that he does not yet have any real
insight into a situation or into the consequences of his actions,
but is blinded by prejudice or simply borne away by impulsive
desires, so far his freedom is-if possible-prudently with-
held by wise governors.

12 SPIRITS AND MEN
Th~ spirit of man is therefore f!~ and responsible only
w_h~n he r~alizes the spi~itual situation in which he is, and
feels himself free to choose. In orcferthat-this may be the
case, the Lord so orders the lives of men and spirits, that men
should not sensibly feel th€ presence of spirits, or their influx
into his mind. If vve felt our will as the -will of- another
prompting us we would not feel free-whether the prompting
were good or evil. Yet at the same time, if we were never
able to know how the case actually is, we would n«~t be able
to realize the nature of our choice. From doctrine wa are
therefore taught about the functions of the spirits who are
with us; so that we may see the importance of om choice, the
inward nature of our responsibility, the fact that in our con-
sent or resistance to various states, suggestions, desires, and
moods, we are in fact turning either towards heaven or
towards hell.
Man's Dependence on Spirits
It is therefore revealed as a truth in the Gospel, that man
can do nothing except it be given him from above. And this
general truth is in the Writings filled in with infinite particu-
lars which show that man cannot lift hand or foot or think the
least idea from his own will or understanding: for his will
and understanding are vessels responsive to the spheres of
spirits and angels. Swedenborg, in order that he might be
instructed, was brought into a state in which he perceived the
operat~on of spirits, yet-by a miracle:--was at the same time
not deprived of freedom.5
He then received "the clearest ex-
perimental proof that all human thought, will, and action are
directed determinatively by the Messiah alone"; that there
was "not even the least of thought that did not sensibly in-
flow" from spirits who were themselves also "ruled as passive
~ AC 6191

SPIRITS AND MEN 13
powers" by the Lord. The spirits sensibly ruled the very
movements of his body; convincing him that what appears to
be our own deeds is the doing-or rather the willing-of
spirits.6
Yet a man is free so far as he can decide what spirits
shall attend him !
Spirits who use man as a subject in this manner are not
aware that they are with man. Such a spirit "knows so little
of the man that he is not even aware that the man is anything
distinct from himself." Man is thus nothing in the eyes of
spirits. And if they knew him-as they did Swedenborg-
they might chide him with "being nothing" or at best an in-
animate machine. Meanwhile the man all the time supposes
himself to be living and thinking and the spirits to be
"nothing !"7
In his Diary Swedenborg tells that, despite the fact that
he could not make the least little motion of his body from
himself, yet at the same time there was insinuated into him a
faculty of choice in whatever he did. Spirits then supposed
that he might have acted otherwise. But it was shown them
that as a matter of fact the circumstances and the spiritual in-
fluxes had conspired and led Swedenborg to what he had
(afterwards) decided to do; and also that they themselves
had effected nothing from themselves but were subjects of
other spirits and societies in an unending chain. It then
seemed to these spirits that, if so, they were "nothing" ; and
they were unwilling to admit this. But Swedenborg insisted
that this was indeed true; still, it was enough for them that
they seemed·to themselves to be able to think, speak, and act
as from themselves, and to be their own. What more did
they want ?8 -
Surprisingly, Swedenborg instructed some spirits that only
when they acknowledge that they are nothing, can they begin
6 WE 1147, 943 8 SD 2464, 2465, 4100
7 SD 3633

14 SPIRITS AND MEN
to be something. Nor was it enough to know or say that one
is nothing; one must believe it.9
"Such is the equilibrium of
all in the universal heaven, that one is moved by another,
thinks from another, as if in a chain; so that not the least
thing can [occur from itself] ; thus the universe is ruled by the
Lord, and indeed with no difficulty !"10
But when some spirits were unable to tolerate the expres-
sion "that they were nothing," the seer consoled them by say-
ing that "they are always something, but that something is
from the Lord."11
And it is the same with man : "Unless the
Lord saw the man to be something," the whole world of spirits
would see him as nothing-or as an inanimate thing. He is
"something-not a mere idea of being !"1 2
And this some-
thing is something of reception. Man cannot control the ex-
periences that come to him: but he can receive or reject, react
affirmatively or negatively. Ii~~~il~y -0n~ re-
g<!rding himself as nothing.13 The celestials kno; this.
They know that to attribute anything to themselves, except
reception, is of evil. No doubt this is involved in the Lord's
saying : "Your speech shall be Yea, yea, Nay, nay ; whatsoever
is more than these, cometh of evil!"
The Non-appropriation of Evil
Evil has no power over one who in sincerity of faith be-
Iieve~-;ifto ben otlllng !14 - - - -
How vitally important and practically effective this truth
of faith is, may be judged from the doctrine which describes
how evil enters into man. Evil is continually infused by un-
clean spirits into man's thoughts, and is as constantly dis-
pelled by the angels. This does not actually harm man.
9 SD 2043£, 2060, 2467, 2671: 2
10 SD 2466
11 SD 4100
1 2 np 46 : 3, 308: 2, 309
13 SD 2520
H SD 4067, 4228

SPIRITS AND MEN 15
"Not that which enters the mouth defileth a man," but that
which proceedeth from the heart! It is by detention in the
thought and by consent and afterwards by act and enjoyment
that evil enters into the will.15
If so, it is appropriated to
man-imputed to him as his. But the reason that it is appro-
( priated to a man is that the man believes and persuades him-
self that he thinks and does this from himself. He identifies
himself with it-and so takes sides with the evil. Believing
tJ1at it is his own, all his self-pride uphold;-it ;nd defef!_ds it.
The evil was not produced by man! Evil spirits-the
whole network of hell-produced it, infused it, and subtly
made man to feel as if he did it from himself. "If man be-
lieved as the case really is, then evil would not be appropriated
to him, but good from the Lord would be appropriated to him;
for then, immediately when evil flows in, he would think that
it was from evil spirits with him; and when he thought this
angels would avert and reject it. For the influx of angels is
into that which a man knows and believes and not into what
man does not know and does not believe."16
If an evil is appropriated it can be removed only by the
arduous and long road of self-examination and of actual re-
pentance. But here we are shown an easier way! Shown
how to shun evils before they become man's own or before
they become actual or confirmed; shown how faith defends
men from evil! And if a man really b~lieves that the good
that prompts him inflows from the Lord through heaven, he is
thereby freed from any self-righteous reflection on his own
act-a thought which would poison the good which he has
received and turn it into the evil of merit and the pride and
the contempt of others that follow in its wake.
he knowl~dge and be_!!ef that all our affections, emotions,
and moods are the actual results of the presence of spirits,
15 AC 6204 1s AC 6206, 761, 3743, 6324£,
DP 320

16 SPIRITS AND MEN
good or evil, m_J§t b~me a watchman w~o mJ!st !:!ever slum-
ber. This faith-that good- inflows from heaven and that
evil inflows from hell, and that man, except for reception, is
"nothing"-must be firmly fixed in definite knowledge. And
to the New Church the knowledge is given in a vast body of
information about spirits of all types and classes. From the
instruction given in the Writings we_may perhaps also gather
information as to h_~~ !_o say "N~nay" !_o _the spirit~~~o
produce various evil ~~ds that captivate us ; as to how we
can to some extent modify or change these states into which
we fall--or rather withdraw from them by degrees.
Choice versus Freedom
Man's spirit is free. Yet it is bound up with the states
of the men and spirits around him. No one can deny that our
thoughts and affections are influenced by the men of the
society with which we are associated in the world'~ work and
pleasures. Even the church undergoes its cycles of common
states, its temptations, its progression in which all take part.
Even angelic societies whose uses are intertwined by mar-
velous modes experience common states, recurrent mornings,
noons, and evenings; for each af!.gel is a center for the influx
of all others.u
Man's spirit is free, but never independent! It cannot
alter its general spiritual environment by any sudden decision,
any more than a man in the world can change the face of na-
ture. The speed of the growth of the mind and of the pro-
gression of a man's spirit is not measured by the fixed time
which is associated on earth with the clock and the calendar
and the orbit of the planets. Yet spiritual states have their
durations-require a preparation and a gradual growth, have
their own cycles, rhythms, and climaxes which cannot be cir-
1 r SD 4-090, 605Be, AC 4225, 2057: 2

SPIRITS AND MEN 17
cumvented. And the development of the state of one spirit
often waits upon that of another, for it depends upon the pro-
gressions of the society of which he is a part.
How men's spirits are affected by the spirits who live in
the world of spirits is seen from the state before the coming
of the Lord, when no flesh could have been saved unless the
spirits of that world had been reduced into order. And his-
tory repeats itself. For Swedenborg notes that in his day tht.
whole world of spirits had become evil, and therefore it could
not but be that mankind should become worse through the
nearer influx of hell. The good inflowing from the Lord
availed less and less, until man could hardly be bent to any
genuine good.18
A general judgment then became inevitable; and it took
place in the world of spirits in the year 1757.19
Its result
was to restore spiritual freedom. Men and spirits had been
in spiritual captivity-had been in states which they could not
alter or change. The progression of their spiritual life of
reformation and regeneration had been arrested because they
had been intricately entangled with evil spirits from whom
they had no power to separate.
It is not to be thought that men living before the last judg-
ment·dil!l not have free agency in spiritual things. All men
have free choice, then as now. In the issues which they dis-
cerned from time to time they had their choice. But freedom
implies more than choice. It implies that one should be free
to follow out one's choice, to progress according to the choice,
and find and enter into the delights of his ruling love. In-
teriorly, all salvable spirits in this world and in the "lower
earth" of the other life had made a choice of good as -over
against evil. Yet they were so much a part of the perverted
world of spirits that they could not shake off their infesters
is SD 4285, 4286, 2180 19 AR preface, TCR 772, LJ
and CLJ passim

18 SPIRITS AND MEN
who stole their delight in spiritual good and truth, insinuated
unhappiness, destroyed cooperation, induced obscurity and
confusion as to what was right and wrong, and prevented
them from finding their way to heaven-or to the true uses of
heavenly life.
The freedom to progress requires an ability to perceive
interior truths. It was this new freedom that was "restored"
when the Lord ordered the world of spirits by His redemptive
work.20
The ordering was done by separating the spirits
there according to their various qualities, so that spirits in
different spiritual states might be seen in contrast, in their
true colors, or-in the light of heaven.
The light of Divine truth which brought about the judg-
ment and reduced the spiritual world into order is still present
in that world; and that Divine light is spreading also into this
world of ours, through the teachings of the Writings of the
New Church. It is the same light. It passes "not through
spaces, like the light of ilie world, but through the affections
and perceptions of truth."21
It affects, and tends to dis-
tinguish and order, the spirits who are with us. We would
surmise that it also orders the things which go on- subcon-
sciously-within man's thinking; and thus ensures the free
operation of the rational faculty with men, for good or for evil.
But consciously and directly it reaches us in the Writings.
The teaching is, therefore, that after the last judgment (when
the group of spirits which the Apocalypse calls "the Dragon"
was cast down), "there was light in the world of spirits. . . .
A similar light also then arose with men in the world, from
which they have a new enlightenment."22
The Writings are shedding a new light on all the states
through which men pass on earth. They also disclose the
character of the spirits who are responsible for our moods of
20 LJ 73, 74 22 CLJ 30
21 CLJ 14

SPIRITS AND MEN 19
sadness, temptation, melancholy, enthusiasm, rashness, con-
fusion. They give us a knowledge by which to judge wisely
how far we can resist such states, and how far they should be
left to the Divine providence. It is our purpose to consider
this new approach to a rational and spiritual life thus opened
to the New Church. But before we enter upon this task it is
necessary to recount the perils which·attend any mortal effort
to breakopen the gates of the unseen world.

III "Regard not them that
hav e familiar spirits,
neither seek after wizards
to be defiled by them. I
am I ehovah your God."
Leviticus 19 : 31
The Danger of Open Communication
with Spirits
Sensual Thought about the Afterlife
Despite the official teachings of the churches, few men in
Christendom believe that they will live after death.23
Few
believe that there are spirits with them, or "even that there are
any spirits." The chief reason assigned for this prevalent
condition is that at this day there is no faith, because genuine
charity is lacking.24
So testify the Writings.
Belief is more than a mere lame assent. There are few
who would not give a superficial assent to the possibility, nay
the probability of human survival after death. But only those
believe who live in the full conviction and consciousness that
this earthly existence is but a preparation for eternal life.
Among the winds of doctrine that blow across the world,
one of the chilliest is this fallacy that nothing is real beyond
the world of matter and that the grave marks the end of all
our hopes. It looks back to childhood with nostalgia as the
halcyon time of one's life, when one could still live in blessed
fancies. It robs manhood and even parenthood of any genuine
delight, leaving only the struggle for bread and social posi-
tion. It saves up for old age only the dried crusts of memory
and a final disillusionment.
Perhaps it might be doubted that so few, in their actual
2a AC 5006: 4 24 AC 5849
20

OPEN COMMUNICATION WITH SPIRITS 21
life, are motivated by a belief in another world. And fortu-
nately "few" is an elastic word ! Yet compared to the time
of Swedenborg, to whom this scarcity of faith was revealed,
this our day presents on the surface an even bleaker picture
of spiritual desolation. Religious hopes are pushed to the
side in modern life, where the mind is instead preoccupied
with so many concerns for the improvement of the mechanism
of natural existence that there i.s room for little else. Natural
life has become an end in itself. The art of living gracefully
and in comfort here on earth is dignified as the height of
achievement, ranking above the wisdom of spiritual charity.
And though many find that the art of "getting along" requires
them to conform to customs and to belong to a church, to
profess a creed and to give to some philanthropic cause, yet
what meditative thought do they ever give to the question of
eternal life, unless they are confronted by the shock of death
to kin or companion?
How empty life must seem for those who think of death
as the termination of everything, and those whose only sure
hope of immortality lies in the size of their grave-stones or
the survival of their names. The thoughts of those who at-
tend the funeral of a friend are usually directed to natural life,
in tribute to his virtue or accomplishment ; yet his death stands
out as an object lesson that all is vanity. For before the
thought of an afterlife most men's minds recoil with a deep
discomfort, a pathetic realization of ignorance and doubt,
which the formal confessions of their churches cannot dispel.
At such times those who are bereaved grope about for com-
fort, and their minds are somewhat more ready than usual to
seize upon either truth or falsity if it will but relieve their
sadness and apprehension. Their hearts may be hardened and
embittered and they may sternly dismiss the possibility of the
soul's survival. But others may feel a desperate desire for
some confirmation that the dead still live, or will live; may

22 SPIRITS AND MEN
seek for something of a purpose in this endless waste of hu-
man lives, and for an ordered scheme and goal in the other-
wise futile struggle of existence.
Even so, people are wont to think sensually about the life
beyond the grave. Even when the teachings of the New
Church are presented, the imagination often kindles only to
the descriptions of the objective appearances of heaven which
seem to fulfil some of our beautiful wish-thoughts, while the
real fact is forgotten that all things in the eternal world are
spiritual. Swedenborg's revelations of the afterlife have in-
deed had a tremendous influence quite apart from the New
Church, and have colored the thoughts of millions. But when
first broached, our doctrine about heaven usually meets only
with an interested tolerance and a politely suppressed wonder
that we seem so sure about it all. For to the average person
in Christendom nothing is very sure. There are few cham-
pions of definite views of the afterlife, although you often meet
with the complacent philosophy that no one church has a
monopoly in matters of truth, and that there may be some
truth in all religions, however contradictory. And so the pul-
pits in most churches avoid preaching against falsities; per-
haps on the principle that those who live in glass houses should
not throw stones, but also because "church-goers" absorb far
more of their spiritual food from prevailing spheres of thought
-from opinions which are dished out promiscuously in maga-
zines and books or offered in casual conversations-than from
their own church.
A certain saving measure of common sense has to a large
part modified the orthodox teachings of Protestants that the
dead sleep in the grave until the Day of Doom and the general
resurrection. Hamlet's reverie recurs: "To die: to sleep-
perchance to dream. For in that sleep of death what dreams
might come. . . . " The idea has found favor that the spirit
-waiting for the final judgment-is somewhere consciously

alive. But his state during this interval between death and
judgment is a matter of speculation. Whether he flits amid
dark space as a luminous etherial body which possibly might
haunt mortals below ; or whether memory might through some
fourth dimension reconstruct a dreamlife in which the con-
sequences of error are punished according to poetic justice ;
or whether the soul, released, lives on as a flame of life await-
ing a new incarnation! What does it matter, men ask, if we
cannot know for sure?
The doctrine of the Roman Catholics is couched more
definitely. It states that the soul is committed to heaven or to
hell immediately after death, although even a penitent person
must make up for his omissions by sufferings in the fires of
purgatory; and later-at the last judgment---each soul will
join its body in a material resurrection on a reconstructed
earth.
Sensual thought about heaven places its reality in material
things. It pictures a place-whether this earth, purified by
fire, or some central star-in which the blessed should gat):ier
in refined and sexless material bodies; perhaps a place presided
over by a race of "angels" created before earth ever was. It
pictures heaven as a place of sensual rewards. The quality
of men's ideas of what they expect heaven to be is described
in the work on Conjugial Love, where it is told how novitiate
spirits were cured of their persuasions as to the various
imaginary joys in which they believe eternal bliss to consist:
paradisal delights, feasting, conversations, wealth and power,
or perpetual glorifications and ecstatic songs of praise; or-
as some thought- mere admission into the sphere of heaven.25
Ignorance about man's state after death naturally breeds
fantasies. Lack of any rational teaching encourages the
imagination to roam at will. Heaven becomes merely the ful-
filment of the cravings thwarted on earth, the satisfaction of
25 CL 2-10

24 SPIRITS AND MEN
natural affections, such as we see instanced in the mythologies
among the heroes of Valhalla or, for the more philosophically
minded Greeks, a submersion into the memories of earthlife,
as was the fate imagined for the brooding shades of the Under-
world. The idea of real spiritual uses and of delights of
charity and wisdom is seldom given any stress or significance
in connection with such imaginary heavens. Nor is the con-
cept of God's justice purified from questionable ethics-for
most of the "orthodox" doctrines give little chance of salva-
tion except to the elect few. But whatever ideas about heaven
they have been offered, men in these distracting times of ours
have found it increasingly difficult to believe, in the afterlife
at all merely upon the say-so of the churches. They have de-
manded proofs in personal experience by which to confirm the
very existence of spirits, if not of angels. And like every
church in the past, so the Christian Church began from olden
times to give birth to various irresponsible sects which par-
ticularly catered to such a desire and purported to furnish
sen.sual proofs of the presence of spirits.
Ancient and Modem Spiritism
Divine revelation has consistently warned against this at-
tempt of man to pry open the gates of the unseen world.
"Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after
wizards ... "- it was written in the Mosaic law. "There
shall not be found among you any one . . . that useth divina-
tion, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or
a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard,
or a necromancer.... "26
Such were to be punished with
death. But this prohibition soon proved to be ineffective.
Israel could not resist the pressure of the combined supersti-
tions of the East! Even Saul, after banishing all sorcerers,
2e Lev. 19: 31, 20: 6, 27, Deut. 18: 9-14

succumbed to the temptation and sought counsel of the ghost
of Samuel. But Isaiah later warned against witchcraft when
he proclaimed, "When they shall say unto you, Seek unto
them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep
and mutter: Should not a people seek unto their God? For
the living unto the dead? To the Law and to the Testimony!
If they speak not according to this word, it is because there
is no light in them."21
The Lord while on earth constantly refused the testimony
of evil spirits as he drove them out of those who were "pos-
sessed." And in one of His parables He cites Abraham as
refusing to send Lazarus back into the world to warn the
five brethren of the rich man; saying, "If they hear not Moses
and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one
rose from the dead."28
But even at that time angels, un-
solicited, appeared to men in vision. And in the early days
of Christianity, the Christian Fathers were careful to warn
their followers against trusting spirits. John wrote in his
epistle, "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits
whether they are of God. . .. Any spirit that confesseth not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God. . . . "29
But the early Christian "gift of prophecy" inadvertently paved
the way for incantations and sorcery, and in medieval times
the belief in the afterlife was accompanied by a dread of ghosts
and ghouls that haunted the cemeteries, and of fantastic vam-
pires and of elemental spirits that could control the wild forces
of nature unless curbed by magical formulas or exorcised by
the prayers and solemn rites of the church. Within the pale
of the church, priests and "saints" were subject to visions and
revelations, while unauthorized mystics and seers claimed in-
tercourse with the unseen world. The hysteria which marked
the great witch-trials even on the American continent was but
2 7Jsa.-g: 19, 20 29 r John 4: l, 3
2s Luke 16 : 19-31

26 SPIRITS AND MEN
an indication of the insanities to which men laid themselves
open by illicit attempts to communicate with spirits and thus
invite obsession.
After the last judgment in 1757, there came something of
a lull in the efforts to seek intercourse with spirits. It be-
came frowned upon as superstitious, and although the same
abuses continued, outstanding instances became rarer. And
then, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, there
sprang up a new movement towards its revival in a more
respectable garb and in more "scientific" form: a movement
which goes under the name of Modern Spiritualism. This
was supposedly a research into occult phenomena by empirical
methods.
Although claiming continuity with the work of seers,
prophets and mystics of all previous ages and denying any
kinship to sorcerers and magi, the partisans of this movement
date its practical beginning with the "Rochester spirit-
rappings" in 1848, when the Fox family heard knocks and
noises which they ascribed to spirits who answered their ques-
tions according to a pre-arranged code. Children at that time,
the Fox sisters later toured this country and England to dis-
play their peculiar spirit-telegraphy. And although one of
them publicly disavowed her own part in these phenomena as
so much fake, the movement had gathered too ~eat momen-
tum to be stopped. People were eager to believe the mar-
velous, and many soon discovered themselves also to be "sen-
sitives"; found that they could serve as "mediums" for spirits
who then "controlled" them. Once estab1ished as mediwns,
they could draw profitable audiences of ardent believers; and
from time to time for the next fifty years the free publicity
given these mediums was tremendous. In 1884 unsubstan-
tiated claims were made of many million "adherents" in Amer-
ica. It was claimed by spiritists that the world of the departed
had long been seeking for this means of coming into contact

with mortals, and that now spirits were crowding the air and
descending to inaugurate a new era in which unbelief would
be wiped out.
The particular accomplishments which spirits learned to
perform included the power to give messages about dead
friends, through the voice or pen of the medium; to write on
covered slates; to lift bouquets of flowers from room to room,
blow trumpets and beat tambourines without human aid ; to
suspend the laws of gravity, lifting people or chairs or tables
into the air ; and finally-but more rarely-to materialize
themselves in a substance ("ectoplasm") which perspired from
the body of the medium so that they could become tangible
and visible, and even be kissed and photographed and engaged
in conversation.
The spirits (or the mediums) were unwilling to participate
in most of these phenomena except amidst small groups of
affirmative friends, and an extra-ordinary preference was
shown for dark rooms and closed cabinets. Yet several
prominent scientists, like Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver
Lodge, W. F. Barrett and Charles Richet, were converted to
a belief in the genuiness of some of the phenomena. In many
lands some society for psychical research now gathers and
sifts the evidence presented by alleged mediums and others,
and so far as is possible, some of their learned investigators
have imposed almost fool-proof conditions upon their experi-
ments. One fact, however, is universally admitted: that al-
most every "physical" medium has been proved at some time
to have cheated by producing the desired phenomena by clever
trickery. This is variously explained by spiritualists: first
of all they admit that the spirits who use the medium are quite
apt to encourage deception, since they retain human failings;
secondly, they concede that a medium whose powers are ex-
hausted and abused, will naturally be reluctant to admit it; and

28 SPIRITS AND MEN
thirdly, the genuine adherents disown all responsibility for
professional exhibitionists,
The societies and laboratories established for psychical re-
search and "parapsychology" make it their task to investigate
all proffered claims to extra-sensory perception, telepathy,
precognition, clairvoyance, psycho-kinesis, etc., as well as al-
leged occurrences of "materializations" and poltergeists.
Most of such studies are conducted quite apart from any re-
ligious inferences. Within the small group of learned men
who confess themselves baffled by some of the experiments,
many are inclined to explain their results as due to physical
and mental powers within man, hitherto not understood. Cer-
tain psychologists have indeed suggested that some echo of
man might survive death, not as an individual but as a part
of an interpersonal psychic field perhaps capable of contact
with the living.* But the hope of spiritualists to convince
the world of the survival of the dead has not been fulfilled.
To most people, the clever accomplishments of the mediums
are a nine-days wonder soon dismissed. And the vapid mes-
sages of cheer from the other world which the seances pro-
duced have been so. ambiguous and valueless that they spoke
poorly for the intelligence of the departed. Confused pratings
that suggest marvelous revelations to come-but which never
come--hold the attention of the devotee. People soon recog-
nized that an atmosphere of unbounded credulity was basic
to the spiritistic movement. Its organized cults have
dwindled in membership, although it has uncounted adherents
and sympathizers among the laity and even the clergy of
various denominations, and its beliefs and practices are shared
by several strange sects that dabble in occultism.
As a religion, spiritualism is of course founded on a sifting
out of certain common elements within the contradictory
*Professor Gardner Murphy,
"Field Theory and Survival," in
Jounial of the American Society
for Psychical Research, Oct. 1945.

"revelations" of the mediums and the "automatic writers."
This means that they honor the Lord, but usually only as a
great medium and a lofty spirit; they place the Bible among
a number of other messages from above; they picture the spir-
itual world as a realm of unending progress, with redemption
possible for evil spirits also--who, they say, are merely "un-
developed"; and they reject the idea of any resurrection of
the material body. One organization encourages belief in
astrology, palmistry, prophecy, and the interpretation of
dreams. Another believes in elemental spirits, and has chosen
as its emblem the pond lily which shoots up from the mud
"through putrid waters," yet evolves beauty and purity. But
all encourage the seeking of sensual proofs of the soul's sur-
vival.
The opposition to Spiritualism comes mainly from the
Roman Catholic Church, from many literalistic sects, from
some of the clergy of more conservative churches, from most
scientists and from skeptics everywhere. Each group has
reasons of its own, either doctrinal or pragmatic, for resisting
the movement. But as is usual in such opposition, each-in
denouncing the spiritistic movement-also rejects the funda-
mental truths which that movement has misused and per-
verted. An instance of this is seen in the attitude of some
physicians who from their studies of the psychopathic wards
have contracted the habit of regarding all extraordinary hu-
man states as abnormal and due to mental disorder. Such
men are not content to condemn the practice of spiritism be-
cause of its ill effects on the nervous system of its victims :
they also regard all claims to spiritual intercourse as the re-
sult of a disordered mind and would classify even the visions
of the prophets and disciples as sensory hallucinations due to
paranoia, paraphrenia, or other forms of disease. Such an
attitude, born from a preconceived denial of the existence of
a spiritual world, precludes all further understanding of the

30 SPIRITS AND MEN
distinctions between the orderly means by which, in the Lord's
providence and according to His protecting laws, the spiritual
world could at times of need be opened to allow prophets and
seers to serve as instruments of a Divine revelation, and the
disorderly enterprises by which men seek to pry into the un-
seen world and by which spirits seek to dominate and obsess
human minds when these are diseased or voluntarily submis-
sive.
Swedenborg and Modern Spiritualism
In several works on the history of modern spiritualism,
considerable space is given to Emanuel Swedenborg, who has
been labeled as "the foremost mystic and seer of modern
times" or as "the father of our new knowledge of supernal
matters." "When the first rays of the rising sun of spiritual
knowledge fell upon the earth they illumined the greatest and
highest human mind before they shed their light on lesser men.
That mountain peak of mentality was this great reformer and
clairvoyant medium, as little understood by his own followers
as ever the Christ has been. . . . In order fully to understand
Swedenborg one would need to have a Swedenborg brain, and
that is not met with once in a century." So writes Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, lately the leading champion and biographer of
the movement. His words are flattering to Swedenborg; but
not to the New Church, which-he says-"has allowed itself
to become a backwater instead of keeping its rightful place as
the original source of psychic knowledge."30
It would seem that Conan Doyle, delving into clues for the
solution of the final mystery, himself lacked the Swedenborg
brain. For the theology of the New Church and the dis-
so Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D.,
LLD., The History of Spiritual-
ism, 2 vols. (New York: George
H. Doran Company, 1926), I, pp.
11, 12, 20. See also J. Arthur
Hill, Spiritualism, Its History,
Phenomena and Doctrine (Cas-
sell and Co., Ltd, 1918)

closure of the spiritual sense of the Word, which were the net
result of Swedenborg's revelations, are not of any comfort to
the spiritistic movement. But in spite of this side of Sweden-
borg's work, Doyle hails "the immense store of information
which," he says, "God sent to the world through Swedenborg.
Again and again they have been repeated by the mouths and
the pens of our own Spiritualistic illuminates."30
To the eyes of New Church readers this admission un-
wittingly reveals more than was intended. For when spirits
do speak to men, it is spirits who are of his own religion or
who adopt his ideas; they can only "confirm whatever the
man has made a part of his religion; thus enthusiastic spirits
confirm in a man all that pertains to his enthusiasm; Quaker
spirits all things of Quakerism; Moravian spirits all things of
Moravianism, and so on." This is said to show that it is un-
true "that man might be more enlightened . . . if he had di-
rect revelation through speech with spirits and angels."31
Spirits who speak with a man speak only from his affections
and according to his thoughts and knowledge. This provision
is made to preserve man's freedom even when he tries to
squander it by offering himself as the dupe of evil spirits.
The only real information that has been given to men since
known history began comes, of course, from the Word and
now especially from the Writings of Swedenborg. And some
of this knowledge, mixed with all manner of superstition, con-
torted by Christian traditions and modified by wishful think-
ing and hoax, has found a fruitful soil in the imagination of
many a spiritist. At the seance, this welter of information is
present in the mind either of the medium or the questioner.
So far as there is any clarity in the supposed answer, it comes
indirectly from the Writings. Nothing new-nothing which
in the slightest adds to the comprehension of the life and order
of the spiritual world-has ever been furnished by the "wiz-
a1 AE 1182: 4, DV 29

32 SPIRITS AN D MEN
ards that peep and mutter." The futility of seeking open in-
tercourse with spirits is abundantly clear from the paucity of
the results.
Possibility of the Intercourse of Spirits and Men
There are many powers latent within man that are not well
understood. Far above our conscious thought there is an in-
terior memory in which all that we have experienced resides
in perfect detail, although beyond our ability to recollect. In
known cases, as for instance in hypnotic sleep, the astonishing
contents of this memory may be divulged or become active as
"subconscious intellection," as "automatic writing," or as som-
nambulency. That spirits can operate this memory of man
is clear from our dreams and may lie behind the emergence
of a "split personality."
There is also a possibility that people who are united in
bonds of kinship or affection may at times convey their
thoughts or fears to each other at a distance by what is called
"telepathy." There is attested evidence that in rare cases
visual ideas may similarly be communicated by "clairvoy-
ance." It is told of Swedenborg that when at Gothenburg he
was able to report on the progress of a fire raging near his
house in Stockholm (Docu. 273). Seemingly the prophet
Elisha was clairvoyant when he told the king of Israel the
plans of the Syrians (2 Kings 6: 12). That such unusual oc-
currences are caused by the communication existing between
associated spirits is not unlikely.
But it is also well to note that many of the claims of mod-
ern mediums go directly counter to what is taught us in the
Writings. There is indeed an influx of the spiritual world
into the natural, and it is by this influx that all organic growth,
vegetable and animal, takes place. Destructive organisms,
such as noxious pests, are-we are taught--('.reations that re-

ceived their contorted forms from the influx of the hells into
corresponding substances on earth.32
But this influx is not
any materialization of the evil spirits; it is merely an activity
of the spheres of the hells. There is no conjunction of the
two worlds except by the mediation of man, that is, by man's
mind.33
We find no ground in the Writings for a belief that
spirits can move the objects of earth or sky without the agency
of the human body, or that they can materialize, whether
through a man or separately. Since biblical times, Jews and
Christians have thought that angels appeared by suddenly as-
suming material bodies when they were seen by prophets or
apostles. Before his full enlightenment, Swedenborg also en-
deavored to reconcile such a belief with his conception of the
nature of the soul, suggesting that by the omnipotence of God
a spirit might be clothed with a temporary embodiment from
materials present in the atmospheres.34
But in the inspired
Writings we read this disavowal: "It is believed in the Chris-
tian world that angels have assumed human bodies and have
thus appeared to men ; but they did not assume them, but the
eyes of the man's spirit were opened, and so they were seen."85
The explanation is simple and reasonable. For man is
created with spiritual senses as well as with natural senses.
He possesses a body of matter held together by physical forces
-by electromagnetic and gravitational fields of force. But
these fields of force are ruled, unified, disposed and directed
by a soul or spirit, and thus by a spiritual purpose and a super-
conscious wisdom which is far above our comprehension. In
fact, the spirit is the real man, and is organized far more in-
tricately than the body. It is indeed a spiritual body36
which
is endowed with spiritual senses and thus with the power to
p~rceive knowledge--to see spiritual objects, "see" truths,
32DLW 343
33 HH 112, AC 3702, 4042
34 R Psych. 523, WE 1457
85 Dom. 14
36 TCR 583

34 SPIRITS AND MEN
civil, moral and spiritual, and to feel and recognize mental
states and sense the relations of all the things which compose
his spiritual environment. These things are seen by the un-
derstanding more clearly than physical objects are seen by the
bodily eyes. But ordinarily they are sensed by us only as
abstractions, as thoughts, imaginations and logical relations.
Yet if "the eyes of a man's spirit were opened," he would see
beyond the contents of his own memory. He would see the
spirits and angels immediately present with him, and see these
in their own spiritual and mental environment which in every
detail would be descriptive of their character and state. All
men are thus equipped for actual vision into the spiritual
world.37
And if men were in the perfect state of the celestials,
as Providence had intended, angels and men could openly
dwell together without harm.88
Swedenborg distinctly claimed that such intercourse as his
own with spirits was not miraculous. "These revelations,"
he wrote, "are not miracles, since every man as to his spirit is
in the spiritual world without separation from his body in the
natural world; but I with a certain separation, but only as to
the intellectual part of my mind. . .. "89
He claimed no
uniqueness in being able to converse with spirits, but noted
that the type and the marvelous extent of these revelations
surpassed even the visions of the men of the Golden Age ; for
they remained in natural light while Swedenborg was granted
to be in spiritual light and in natural light at the same time.
Such intercourse had never before been known in history, and
-taken in connection with the manifestation of the Lord in
person to Swedenborg and the revelation of the spiritual sense
of the Word-was "superior to any miracles."40
In the Most
Ancient Church, direct or immediate revelations were given
through open intercourse with angels, and there was no need
sr AC 69 s0 Inv. 39, Coro., Miracles v.
.ss SD 2541£, AC 125 ~0 Inv. 52, 43, 44, 39

for a written Word.41
This is indeed the mode of revelation
on other earths also, because of the genius of their inhabit-
ants.42 But when our race, through the eating of the fruit of
knowledge came into its peculiar external and scientific genius,
this way of communicating with heaven was closed. Instead,
the Word of God was given through appointed prophets whose
spiritual senses were opened ;4 3
and by means of this Word,
written and preserved for all ages, men could be reformed
through rational things of doctrine. Indeed, the Writings
abound in statements to the effect that no one is reformed by
visions and by speech with the dead, because such things
compel.44
Visions
Something should here be added concerning the visions
which were permitted to the prophets and others whose spir-
itual senses were opened so that they could perceive events
which occurred in the spiritual world.
The fact that those who are infirm in mind and indulge
much in fancies are apt to become subject to hallucinations,
does not mean that genuine visions have never been granted.
Pathological symptoms-such as manic-depressive delusions
and schizophrenia and hallucinations- are only perversions of
man's normal faculties and are due to "spirits who by means
of fantasies induce appearances which seem to be real."
People with visionary tendencies may thus-like credulous
children-see monsters behind the trees of the forest or con-
vert shadows into ghosts.45
But genuine visions are the actual seeing of "such things
in the other life as have real existence."46
They are seen by
41 DV 27, AC 3432 44 DP 134, HH 309
•2 AC 7802, 7804, 10632, 10380ff 4G SD 1752, DP 13-f
4S Num. 24: 15 seq., II Kings 46 AC 1970
6; 17

36 SPIRITS AND MEN
the eyes of the spirit, either by day or night.47
Such were the
visions of the prophets who saw not only various representa-
tives shown in the spiritual world and containing Divine
arcana, but saw the spirits themselves and heard their speech.
The men of the Most Ancient Church were instructed by
such heavenly visions, for they were given to know their inner
meaning.48
The Hebrew prophets, and John at Patmos, had
such real or Divine visions significant of the thoughts and
affections of angels, but understood them not.4 9
Some of the
prophets were actually possessed by spirits; like Saul, who
spoke and acted in a state of trance.50
Others exercised their
own discretion, and spirits spoke to their inner h&aring.n
When in "vision" the prophets were not in the body, but "in
the spirit."52
As was foretold in Daniel, prophetic visions· of
whatever kind were discontinued after the Christian dispensa-
tion had begun.63
The Divine visions which the Lord from childhood had in
His Human on earth were most perfect, because "He had a
perception of all things in the world of spirits and in the
heavens, and had an immediate communication with
Jehovah."54
Swedenborg also experienced certain visions. But his
normal state, he tells us, was not one of vision as usually
understood or one of "trance." But what he saw, heard and
felt in the spiritual world was experienced in full wakefulness
of body.65
And like the "Divine visions" seen by the prophets,
Swedenborg's explorations in the other world were for the
sake of his being instructed by the .Lord. The Scriptures
were not revealed in a state of vision, but were "dictated by
41 AC 6000, 1975, DP 134
48 AC 125, 1122
49 AE 575 : 2, AR 7, 36, 229e
50 AC 6212, SD 2022, 2282
61 AC 6212
62 Lord 52, DP 134
63 Dan. 9 : 24, 12 : 9, DP 134
54 AC 1584, 1784, 1786
&s. AC 1885, CLJ 35, TCR 157,
cp WE 1351, 1353

the Lord to the prophets by a living voice."56
In the case of
Swedenborg, the Lord instructed him through spiritual sight,
but the Heavenly Doctrine and the internal sense of the Word
were given him by a dictation into the interiors of his rational
mind, with varying degrees of perception, while he read the
Word.57
A type of diabolical visions can be induced by "enthusiastic
spirits." This is produced by the "magic" of hell, and it dis-
torts the truth, as was the case with the lying prophets men-
tioned in the book of Kings.58
The spirits who cause such
visions are now separated and restrained in their hells.59
The Writings have now made unnecessary any private
revelations or visions. Divine or prophetic visions are no
longer provided and would not be understood if they were.
Diabolical visions are severely restricted by spiritual laws.
And there remain now only fantastic visions, which are "mere
delusions of an abstracted mind."60
Warnings against Seeking Speech with Spirits
"Nevertheless, conversation with spirits is possible, though
rarely with the angels of heaven; and this has been granted to
many for ages back."61
And human nature is such that those
who have only had fantastic visions are inclined to boast about
them and exaggerate them to gain the ear of an audience.62
Speech with spirits "is rarely permitted, because it is perilous.
. . . Some who lead a solitary life occasionally hear spirits
speaking to them, and without danger." A spirit may thus
come to a man and communicate some words ; but still it is not
permitted the man to speak with him mouth to mouth, lest the
56 AR 36, AC 7055 : 3, HH 254
s1 AC 6597, 6608, 5171, SD
4820, TCR 779, DV 5, 6. See
chapter XVI!
58 DP 134, AE 575: 2, I Kings
22: 23
59 SD 1756
60 DP 134
61 DP 135, comp. HH 253
62 SD 1752

38 SPIRITS AND MEN
spirit should come to realize that he is with a man.63
There-
fore a spirit who addresses a man is permitted to speak "only
a few words; and they who speak by the Lord's permission
never say anything that takes away the freedom of reason, nor
do they teach. For the Lord alone teaches man, but mediately
by the Word in a state of illustration.... "64
A man who is in enlightenment from the Lord through a
love of the truths of the Word may sometimes hear the speech
of spirits, but he is never taught by them, but "led" with every
precaution for his freedom.65
This speech may be perceived
by such men as a kind of "response by vivid perception in their
thought or by a tacit speech therein, and rarely by open
speech ; and it is to the effect that they should think and act
as they will and as they are able, and that he who acts wisely
is wise and he who acts foolishly is foolish; but they are never
instructed what to believe and what to do. . . . They who are
taught by influx what to believe or what to do are not taught
by the Lord nor by any angel of heaven, but by some en-
thusiastic spirit .. . who leads them astray."66
Those who desire to be instructed by spirits "do not realize
that it is conjoined with peril to their soul !"67 Only evil
spirits come to the summons of man :
"When spirits begin to speak with a man he ought to
take heed lest he should believe anything whatever from
them; for they say almost anything! They fabricate
things and lie. . . . If they were permitted to describe
what heaven is . . . they would tell so many lies-and
this with solemn affirmations-that a man would be
amazed. Therefore when spirits are speaking, I have not
been permitted to have faith in the things they related.
a3 HH 249
64 DP 135, 172
65 AE 1183
66 DP 321 : 3
e1 AE 1182, HH 456: 3

For they have a passion for inventing; and whenever a
subject comes up in conversation they think they know it
and give their opinions-one after another-one in one
way and another in another, quite as if they knew! And
if a man then listens and believes, they press on and de-
ceive and seduce in diverse ways. For example, if they
were permitted to talk about things to come. . . . "68
And they can impersonate others so that they even deceive
themselves that they are some one else! "Let those who
speak with spirits beware, therefore, lest they be deceived
when the spirits say that they are those whom they have
known and who have died. For ... when like things are
called up in the memory of man and so are represented to
them, they think that they are the same persons."69
"These
things make evident the danger in which a man is who speaks
with spirits or who manifestly feels their operation."70
Such warnings against seeking sensual proof for the exist-
ence of spirits should suffice for any New Church man. Yet
from the beginning, the temptation to explore the other world,
as Swedenborg did, or to call upon its powers of influx il-
licitly, has threatened the New Church. A few instances may
be cited.71
In 1786, a French society of "Illuminati" was
formed by Abbe Pernety, which mixed New Church doctrine
with spiritism and Freemasonry. Similar ideas, in milder
forms, such as the practice of "animal magnetism" and the
healing of the sick by exorcising spirits, brought an early end
to a genuine New Church movement in Stockholm about 1790.
68 SD 1622
69 SD 2860£, 2687
10 AE 1182, Docu. n. 246; Let-
ters and Memorials of Emanuel
Swedenborg (Swed. Sc. Ass'n
1955), pages 533, 534.
71 See C. T. Odhner, Annals of
the New Church, vol. I (Bryn
Athyn, Pa., 1904) ; and Mar-
guerite Beck Block; The New
Church i11 the N ew W orld (New
York : Henry .Holt and Co.,
1932)

40 SPIRITS AND MEN
In 1817, James Johnston, a simple-minded working man be-
longing to the Salford New Church in England, began to
receive visions in which Abraham and other "arch-angels"
dictated nonsense which has been published in his spiritual
"Diary." In 1846, Ludwig Hofaker, who had edited and
translated some of the Writings, died of insanity after harm-
ing the New Church in Germany by advocating spiritistic
theories and practices. In 1844, Mr. Silas Jones, with the
sanction of a leading New Church minister, conducted a spirit-
istic circle in Brooklyn, profanely mixing sorcery and
astrology with New Church rites. In 1859, Thomas Lake
Harris, who had ostensibly embraced the New Church after
megalomaniac adventures with spiritism on this continent,
visited England and almost succeeded in turning the Sweden-
borg Society there into an agency for spiritistic propaganda,
converting, with his strange charm and marvelous eloquence,
William White, the Swedenborg biographer, and Dr. J. J.
Garth Wilkinson, a most profound student of the Writings;
causing the latter to descend into the Hades of Harrisism for
an interval of some years during which he produced verses by
spirit-dictation. Harris's career ended in scandal and dis-
grace.
But it is not enough to say that the New Church, like many
other worthy movements, must have its "lunatic fringe." For
throughout the years the recurrent defense of spiritistic prac-
tices in several New Church journals has shown that ~
temptation to find a sensual approach to the spiritual world is
- -- --=--------==--------- -------likely to come wherever the faithful study of the Heavenly
Doctrine is neglected, or where a secret or open desire is har-
bored to abandon the arduous way of redemption which the
Lord offers to thos~-~ho areof the spirit; al-church. This
a_p~intes! ~ay_is_~formation through doctti~~ and reason,
through the discipline of self-compulsion- and loyalty to- t he
truth. It is a difficult road, but one which is necessary for

our race and genius, that is, for all those whose hearts must
confess to being subject to hereditary and actual evils.
The temptation is to think that we do not need to walk that
road, to think that we have attained to a celestial state and may
ignore the discipline of doctrine and can rely on our own
power t~ with~tand the onslaughts of the_h<:_!!s and on our_in-
s~ive dis_cernment to kn_ow <_!.~vil spi~it when we meet him.
But let us humbly recognize that "the Lord enters into man
through no other than an internal way, which is through the
Word and doctrine and preachings from the Word."72
This
way does not lead downward to a dependence on the senses
and its innumer;tl;ie fallacies, but up to the rational mind where
alone a man is free to see the spiritualthings otheave~~
their o~ light.
12 DP 131

IV "The a11gel of the Lord
eiicampeth round about
them that fear Him, and
delivereth them.
Psalm 34: 7
Our Spiritual Guardians
Angelic Mediations
At creation, as recorded in the book of Genesis, God said,
"Let us make man in our image after our likeness." Some
have been disturbed by this wording, which suggests that
many Divine creators might have been at work. And the
Hebrew word for God is Elohim, which is a plural construc-
tion. It is a "plural of eminence" used for the one God; but
only when. the Divine truth is referred to, for truth displays
the manifold powers and aspects of God. Many Divine laws
concurred in man's creation. The same word, elohim, is how-
ever used also for the false gods of the nations and even for
the angels and prophets who receive Divine truths.7
3
And in
the spiritual sense, the six days of creation describe the process
of man's regeneration, the name Elohim being used to indicate
that in regenerating man the one God acts through innumer-
able agencies, and that it is through the ministry of angels that
He leads, awakens, governs, and disposes man's spiritual life
and thus bestows upon him the truly human qualities which
are meant by the image and likeness of God.74
The inmost soul of man, or the human internal, is indeed
not affected by this angelic ministry. For it is, in degree, far
above the angelic heavens and is acted upon only by the Lord
whose life inflows into it by an immediate way.75
But as to
1s See John 10: 34 and Psalm 75 AC 1999: 3, 4; Infi. 8, LJ
82 25: 6
74 AC 50, 300
42

OUR SPIRITUAL GUARDIANS 43
. the interiors of his spirit or mind, and as to his ruling love and
its inner thought which does not fall within the consciousness
of man himself, he dwells in a society of heaven or of hell.76
And as to his natural, or what is the same, his rational mind
and its conscious thought and will, man is-in all but realiza-
tion-an inhabitant of the world of spirits.77
The body of man is under the general influx of heaven.
It is in the order of its creation and governed by the soul.
Spirits are not adjoined to man's body,78
and do not affect its
life and its states directly; nor do they have any part in the
expression of our thought and will in speech and act; for this
influx of the mind into the body follows orderly laws outside
of the control of either men or spirits.79
Spirits do however "inflow" into what is thought and con-
sciously desired by man. Their hidden operations are what
make possible man's conscious life and affection, and manifest
themselves in us as impulses, imaginations and reasonings.
The angels, on the other hand, act upon man's interiors, and
produce no perceptible effects in man's mental life. For their
influx is "tacit." It doe~ not stir up material ideas or object-
memories ;80
but is directed to man's ends or inner motives,
which are not consciously articulated in man's mind, but which
are none the less efficient and secretly powerful.81
The angels
also rule and regulate the evil spirits who are near a man,
generally without the knowledge or perception of these
spirits.82
Guardian Angels
The revelations of the Second Advent lay bare the mag-
nificent order of the spiritual empire of the Lord, in which the
10 AC 3644, 10604: 5, DP 307:
2, 278b: 6, TCR 14, CL 530: 2
11 HH 430, AC 5854
78 See chapter XIV
1 9 AC 5862, 5990; HH 296.
See chapter XIII
80 AC 6209
81 AC 5854

44 SPIRITS AND MEN
Lord correlates the finite wills of all men, spirits, and angels,
and holds them in mutual freedom, under the rule of a law
which is able to guarantee a sense of "as-of-one's-self" life to
every living being on every plane, yet is able to weave their
uses together for the creation of a glorious form wherein the
happiness of each one is reflected to all and that of all to each.
To every man the Lord has assigned two guardian angels,
one celestial and one spiritual.82
This is not an arbitrary
number. It results from the fact that man's will and under-
standing, at every stage of life, each have a ruling state and
quality which responds to that particular influx which is most
kindred to it. And each angel in heaven also instinctively
seeks that ultimate expression for his life which most closely
corresponds to his love. For life descends to ultimates. Yet
the angel does not desire to descend to the level of merely ex-
ternal human life, or to face again the imperfections of earthly
conditions, such as are reflected in man's outward thinking.
He dwells with man in the community of those spiritual riches
of the internal man with which man's supraconscious thought
is stored; which include not only childhood "remains" of
innocence, but all the later states of faith and worship which
abide where moth and rust do not corrupt.
In this life, man is not conscious of his spiritual treasures,
or of the brilliant wealth and glory that is concealed within
his vague spiritual perceptions. They come to him only as
the stirring of something of charity, or as occasional enlighten-
ment and delight in truth.83
The spir_itual thought of man
flows into his natural thought, which in turn clings to his
memory. With Swedenborg, the case was indeed different.
With him, by a Divine provision, a certain separation took
place between the thought of his spirit and the thought of his
body. And he could therefore perceive the presence of the
s2 SD 3525 83DLW 252

angels and spirits who were with him; which is not possible
to ordinary men.84
It is not possible for guardian angels to see the man with
whom they are, although they know when they are with a
man. To lead and moderate his affections, and to modify and
bend them in various directions as far as man's free will per-
mits, is indeed ·one of the specific functions of angelic serv-
ice.8 5 The angels observe if any new hells are opened; and
if man brings himself into any new evil, they close those hells
as far as man suffers it. They dissipate foreign or strange
influxes which may tend to harm man, calling forth goods
and truths from man's mind to combat the evil put forth by
the wicked spirits; and they are vigilant every moment in
regard to man's safety.86
They attentively and continually
notice what the evil spirits and genii with man are intending
and attempting, and they feel great joy when they perceive
that their service has made it possible to remove some evils
and to lead man nearer heaven.87
These angels, or angelic spirits, were seen by Swedenborg
"near the head" of man. Yet it does not appear that they
visualize the man. Unless they reflect, they think no other-
wise than that they are the man-but the interior man, the
man as to his interior thought which man does not yet con-
sciously realize. If they reflect, they are able to discern that
they are angelic spirits,88
and have been with a man; even as
we know that some impulse we feel came from spirits. But
the angelic spirits consciously perform the use of extending
the Lord's protection to man. And the union at the time is
intimate : they dwell in the man's affections,89
live themselves
into his inmost unconscious life, and feel the utmost sympathy
with all the good thoughts which thence issue into man's mind.
a. Coro., Mir. v, HH 246
85 AC S.992, HH 39
86 AC 5992
81 AC 5980, 5992, HH 391
88 SD 3525
SD HH 391

46 SPIRITS AND MEN
They consider man as a brother and even defend his faults
against too intensive self-criticism; or, on the other hand, they
may keep him within sight of his evils.90
Yet angelic spirits are not aware of what man is doing or
thinking in the externals of his thought. For their sphere is
that of the interior memory.91
And especially is this the case,
Swedenborg notes, at this day when angels cannot have any
direct conjunction with man.92
The angels therefore have an
ardent longing that the kingdom of God Messiah might come
so that a closer conjunction might be brought about between
them and mankind.93
In most ancient times, as still on certain other earths,
spirits were at times able to communicate openly with men
and converse with them. The spirit is then reduced to the
state in which he was when on earth; his external memory is
aroused so that he assumes again the whole complex of his
former natural thought ; and then the interior sight of the man
is opened, and they appear to each other as if both were men
together.94
In such a way angels appeared to the prophets.
But at this day such vision is rarely given, Jest men be com-
pelled to belief. On the other hand, even today, those men
who think abstractedly from the body, while in meditation,
interior reflection, or sustained abstruse ideas, are sometimes
seen as to their spirits in their own society in the spiritual
world.95
There such are easily distinguished from other
spirits; "for they go about meditating and in silence, not
looking at others and apparently not seeing them ; and as soon
as any spirit addresses them, they vanish."96
90 AC 761, 2890
01 SD 206, AC 2473, 2477
92 HH 593
93 SD 206
94 AC 10751
95 HH 438, SD 4769
96 HH 438

Swedenborg's Testimony
Because Swedenborg thought profoundly, he would, like
other men, normally have appeared at times in societies of
angelic spirits. But the peculiar state of Swedenborg was
such that he could maintain himself in independent abstract
thought and thus consciously converse with spirits and enjoy
spiritual sensation even while in bodily wakefulness.
When his spiritual thought was not abstracted from the
thought of material objects he was invisible to the angelic
spirits. For material objects cannot be reproduced as such
in the spiritual world; and the ideas of such objects in time
and space cannot be expressed by the universal spiritual lan-
guage. But when he became "in the spirit"-that is, when
material ideas were separated from his spiritual thought (and
only those material ideas which were in entire correspondence
with the spiritual ideas were at all active)-then he became
visible to the spirits, could perceive their wisdom, and con-
sociate with them as one of themselves. It was thus that
Swedenborg could explore the heavens and live the life of
angels and spirits. It was thus that the treasures of the
spiritual sense of the Word, and every Divine arcanum, could
be conveyed to his mind and be grasped in enlightenment and
later, under Divine inspiration, could be written in rational
natural language, "clear as crystal" (DV 6).
But Swedenborg's mission also gave him an opportunity
to instruct angels about their relation to men. We do not
imagine that when he visited some heaven he reduced all the
angels there into the state of that class of angelic spirits who
"are with men" and are called "guardian angels." Still,
Swedenborg was sometimes allowed to direct his spiritual
thought into natural thought, and thus-by way of experiment
-show approximately the change which occurs when angelic
spirits are with men.

48 SPIRITS AND MEN
Thus it is told how certain angelic spirits, when they re-
tired from Swedenborg into their own spiritual society, came
into a spiritual state and into supereminent ideas of spiritual
thought and into the understanding of spiritual speech and
writing which conveyed this thought most accurately and
fully.97
But when they returned to Swedenborg, they found
themselves to have come into his natural state and were en-
tirely unable to express their spiritual ideas or to understand
the speech or writing of heaven: but they could now think only
in terms of Swedenborg's thoughts or, rather, converse with
each other by his ideas and speak to him only by the natural
languages that he knew. In other words, from their ordinary
state as angelic spirits they had been reduced to attendant
spirits, by their directing their attention to his thoughts which
were conjoined to his natural memory. Yet they were still
able to converse openly and consciously with Swedenborg as
a person, for he was in a state widely different from that of
other men, and was obviously a different individual from them.
Some of these spirits actually accompanied him to his home,
and as he began to write they could see through his mind a
moth which was walking on his papcr.97
This is not possible
to our attendant spirits.
The State of an Attendant Spirit
From these incidents it is very clear that our guardian
angels are--for the sake of their use--reduced into a state
resembling man's. Angels principally inflow into the interior
thought which a man is unable to perceive within himself be-
cause it is in the realm of ends and is not articulated to his
conscious reflection. This interior thought they assume as
their own, implying an accommodated state not comparable
to angelic wisdom itself. Since it is true of all angels that
97 CL 326-329, comp. DV, chap. iii.

their common basis must be the human race on earth ;08
and
since man is the plane upon which the thoughts of the angels
rest; it might perhaps seem strange that angels attendant upon
man are reduced into man's own general state. For if this is
so, whence comes the progress of the heavens?
The answer must be that the angels have access to man-
kind as a general basis even when not serving a use as man's
guardians. And it is indeed said that the particular spiritual
beings who "are with men" are not from heaven or from hell,
but are spirits who as yet await their judgment or final
preparation.99
But such statements do not contradict the
principle elsewhere laid down, that spirits who are with men
can indeed be from hell or from heaven. If from hell, they
must be such as are not confined there but who--not having
been as yet fully vastated-have emerged into the world of
spirits for a more complete vastation and are thus in the state
of the world of spirits, or in something of a natural-rational
state. In the case of angelic guardians, they-whether spirits
or angels-must also be reduced into the state of man's natural
thought and life. And the general rule may thus be seen that
the guardian spirits with man are all emissaries or representa-
tives of some spiritual society either in heaven or in hell. In
other words, they are "subject-spirits."100
If all angels were reduced into a state attuned to that of
man, it would defeat the purpose of influx and guardianship.
Instead the Lord provides that each angelic society should act
upon man through intermediates. These may be spirits in
the world of spirits into one of whom the angels of the society
concentrate their thought, and whom they inspire with their
own illustration and power so that he may act for them and
from them. Or else, one of the members of that society serves
98 LJ 9, SD 5190
09 AE 537, DLW 140, AC 5852,
HH 600
loo AC 4403, 5983-5989, 5852,
HH 601, AR 816 : 2, SD 5529,
3632e, comp. 4461

50 SPIRITS AND MEN
as an emissary and subject. In either case the subject acts
and speaks and thinks from the society ; he thinks nothing
from himself, although he feels entirely as if he did so from his
own choice and his own thought. The greater the numbers
in a society who thus "turn themselves" to some spirit and
direct their "intuition" into him, the greater power and clarity
does this spirit possess.101
Through these particular spirits the currents of life and
illustration are directed to the varied states of man, so as to
stir particular states in his mind, without rousing the whole
dormant will of the proprium. For his will, from heredity
and birth, is entirely evil in tendency. His will is a malforma-
tion which can receive only the life of hell. If there should
be a sudden excitation of the whole of this life, all would be
over with man. He would be submerged in a flood of passion
and fantasy; and heavenly influx would be impossible.
The Lord has ordained otherwise. He has provided that
man's native life shall not suddenly exhibit all its hideous
potentialities, but that it shall be revealed only little by little
while earth-life progresses--aroused only so far as it can be
comprehended by conscious thought. In other words, the
Lord has provided that there shall be no general influx into the
conscious part of the mind, but that man's responsible life
shall be carried on in the understanding by states of thought
and will that develop gradually; and that all the forces of the
spiritual world shall have their representatives near man and
shall balance each other's influence, and so leave man in free-
dom.
The Number of Our Attendant Spirits
In general, each man has four attendant spirits. Two
angelic spirits are present. The othe~ arethe subjects-
101 AC 5987

respectively-of the hell of "genii" and the hell of "satanic
spirits." These four are generally invisible to each other,
with the exception that the good spirits see the evil spirits
~hose wicked_in~nt they seeITo 1rustrate~~oneof
them see the man with whom they are, but only his affec-
tions.103
The intimacy of these spirits with man's whole mind may
be seen from the revealed fact that the spirits near to man
think that they are the man and, if evil, are unwilling to admit
that they are no longer living in the body, although this could
easily be shown them if they were willing to reflect.104
The
appearances upon which their self-deception rests are indeed
strong. For such spirits, while they are near man, possess
or assume his whole memory ! Angelic spirits would assume
his whole interior memory; other spirits his exterior mem-
ory106 with all his past, with his whole personality, his active
self; yet all this without disturbing man's feeling of self-life
and freedom in the least. Nothing of a spirit's own natural
memory is permitted to be active. Spirits forget themselves
and their own natural past, lest confusion should result in
man's mind by their communicating their memories to him.
Several spirits, forgetting their own identities, may at the same
time suppose themselves to be the man, and yet man be hap-
pily oblivious of their illusions !1°0
Each spirit would then
take, from the mazes of man's memory, all that harmonizes
with his own affection, and man may thus find himself torn
by opposing delights. But all the attending~pirits, because
they thus identify man's mind with their own, act as his
friends.107
Spirits generally do not remain long with a man but are
102 AC 6189, HH ?.07, AC 5848,
5983, 904
10a AC 1880, 5470, 5849
104AC 6192, HH m
105 SD 3104
1oa AC 6194, SD 3525
101 SD 2852, 796£, 4716, AC
6192, 6200

52 SPIRITS AND MEN
always changing according to man's advance in age or state.
A striking exception to this rule is suggested in the teaching
that death does not separate coajpgial ·partners, "since the
spirit of the deceased dwells continually with the spirit of
the one not yet deceased, and this even until the death of the
other, when they meet again and reunite, and love each other
more tenderly than before, because in the spiritual world."108
But that the partner is always in the state typical of an at-
tendant spirit is not said, and in no wise follows.
From a certain relation we judge that these four special
attendants, or at least one among them, may be the same for
a long time. In the presence of Swedenborg, and through his
memory, spirits could sometimes become aware with what
men they were closely consociated. Such consociate spirits
resemble their earthly alter ego, sometimes even as to dress.
One such spirit declared that he <:!:JUld upderstand clearly all
that the man he attended said, but that the man could not
ulllerstanCI the·things he,tl1e spirit, said. Another admitted
that he thought and spoke from a certain man on earth as the
man did from him.109
But this realization was exceptional,
due to Swedenborg's presence.
Without an associate spirit with an affectio~similar to his
own, and thence perceptions of a like kind, a mlln could not
think analytically, rationally or spiritually.110
T~e attendant
spirits may take on the man's whole memory or only a part,
and remain with the man as long as they represent a general
state. As the man advances from childhood, both his angelic
guardians and his infernal attendants are changed. In in-
~ngels of the celestial type, including infant spirits, are
with him and insinuate innocence. In childhood, spirits of
th.e natural heaven are close, instilling an affection of knowing.
In youth, spirits of intelli~ence, subjects of the secortd heaven,
108 CL 321
1 0 9 TCR 137
110 TCR 380: 3 '

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